Marilyn Lynch: U2 makes you believe

Thursday

Jul 28, 2011 at 12:01 AMJul 28, 2011 at 6:49 AM

Surrounded by other fans at a U2 concert, cynicism melts away and you want to change the world.

Marilyn Lynch

My parents were uninterested in music, for the most part. Occasionally my mom would listen to the gospel station while ironing, but otherwise the radio was used to find out whether we had a snow day from school.

They never owned a stereo, didn’t listen to records or sing in the church choir, didn’t attend my high school band concerts. To this day, my mother will set out on a road trip and never turn on the radio.

What saved me from a musicless existence was my big sister. We shared a room, and she had an old pink radio that got better reception if you piled things on top of it. Three cheers for 1970s album-rock A.M. radio. From earliest memory, the Beatles, Queen and — God forbid — Black Betty (blam-a-lam) were my companions.

Unlike my husband — whose parents both liked music, and whose father in particular accumulated albums by the score — I feel like I had to start from scratch in my popular music education. In many ways, I feel like I’m still struggling to catch up, but it’s a labor of love. I listen to music every day; I subscribe to a number of concert listing email services. It’s a passion.

When I was younger, I was a raging optimist. When I got out of college and had to live on my own, though, I started to feel differently. Paying for college left me flat broke, and starter-level salaries didn’t do anything to improve my situation. Struggling to get by darkened my outlook and made me more skeptical.

I’m the type to rebut political speeches on TV with snide remarks along the lines of “yeah, right” or “sure, if you don’t count THOSE civilian deaths.” I’m not as intelligently cynical as many of my coworkers in the news industry, but I have a pretty low opinion of human nature.

Except at U2 concerts.

It’s impossible to be cynical at a U2 show.

When I go to a U2 show, I try to get a general admission ticket. U2 always charges less for floor — remember when you’re sitting in those $200 seats that the people on the ground paid a quarter as much to be much closer. What that means, though, is a lot more work getting there.

For 2005’s Vertigo tour, my friends and I tried to get to the venue around 6 or 7 in the morning. For the current stadium tour, it was more like 5 a.m. — and that’s after stopping by the day before the show to register a place in line.

So, travel to a strange city, stay in a hotel, get up around 4 a.m., rush to get ready and assemble your daylong needs — money, camera, ticket, food, water — grab a cab, get in line and wait. And wait. And wait.

If you’re lucky, you can grab a few Zs. Depending on the weather and whether you’re waiting on grass or concrete, you might be uncomfortable. Starbucks isn’t even open yet. You make friends with fellow fans and spend the day pacing yourself.

I know I need to eat and drink — some folks tough it out, but I’m too old for that. You might need sunscreen and a hat, or rain poncho, or even long underwear. Toward mid-afternoon you have to regulate your liquid intake and output — remember, you’ll soon be inside the stadium and unable to leave your post from about 4 to 10 p.m.

By the time you enter the venue, you’ve been in line for 12 hours. Hungry, thirsty, sleepy, oh-so-tired. And you still have to run, run toward the stage and hope for a spot at the railing, and then wait while the setup is finished, and wait through the opening band, and wait during the set break. And then it happens.

I do it for those couple of solid hours completely free of cynicism and anger. Free of criticism and negativity. Just me and 50,000 or so of my closest friends.

Maybe this is the kind of ecstasy that charismatic church members feel, the shared passion and uplift. Something to believe in; a direct pipeline to divine pleasure.

Me and my kind, jumping up and down to “Until the End of the World.” Screaming to “Vertigo.” Crying during “MLK” and “Walk On.” Raising our hands and vowing to sign, to vote, to click, to text, to help, to hope.

Believing that one person can make a difference. Hoping together that group passion can translate to group power; believing in it, for the moment. Impossible to be negative.

Things that make you cringe later on the bootleg, or on the DVD — you believe in them utterly in the moment. No political speech seems overly long or out of place, no appeal to act seems misguided or wrong. It’s all the same thing, the same experience. It’s not jarring, not intrusive; it’s part of the experience. Because you believe.

I’ll be a gloomy cynic again soon enough.

Marilyn Lynch is the archivist and reigning U2 fan at The State Journal-Register. She can be reached at marilyn.lynch@sj-r.com.

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